Here at GarageGames we have had XB360s since Alpha hardware. Currently, we have about eight dev-stations in place while we are finishing up Marble Blast Ultra for distribution through the Live Arcade feature of the system. I can tell you that with everything that I know about the system, I will be the first in line at Best Buy to get my own system for home. Here's why.
I could care less about processors or GPU's, but even if I did the XB360 is great in this area. But, it is everywhere else that the system shines even brighter. The wireless controller feels JUST RIGHT, and I can finally sit on my couch and play games on my HD television (which has precious few other HD signals where I live). No other wireless controller in history, other than Wavebird for Gamecube, has felt right. This time MS nailed it.
If I'm not feeling like I want to play game, I can easily plug my iPod into the front of the system and listen to my music. Currently, I'm not much of a techie, so I listen to my music by plugging my iPod into one of those cheesy little self powered speaker systems. This might not impress the Slashdot crowd, but I don't care enough about this kind of thing to take even five minutes to figure out which input, which cable, etc. it takes to hook up to my myriad amps, etc. to make it work.
Live Arcade downloadable games are the biggest thing that will make this system a hit. Being able to sit on my couch, and choose from hundreds of games without going to the store is a HUGE WIN. Many other things such as transferrable memory cards that allow "roaming" so you can take your downloaded games to a friend's house, micropayments so you can easily buy add-ons to your game (or allowing parents to give their kids purchasing power) all add up to a system that is light years ahead of current systems.
Microsoft has done so many things right with this system that we continue to be amazed.
Greg's post was good, but I think this is currently "conventional wisdom". He simply stated what everybody has been feeling for the past couple of years. The point that this kind of thinking will change the industry is correct.
I don't want to turn this post into a big sales job, but GarageGames IS a label for indies. If you haven't heard from us yet, you soon will. I was the founder of Dynamix, a Sierra label, and got fed up with large corporate control. Myself and a few of the best technologists felt the way Greg does three years ago, but we did something about it. We leveraged our position at Sierra to get control and ownership of the code behind Tribes 2, and started selling it for $100 per programmer as the Torque Game Engine. Eighteen months since we sold our first engine, we have amassed a very large and active development community, and have started selling games via ESD.
We do anything we can to help indies: be it cheap, powerful, cross platform technology with an extremely liberal license; team building; or publishing. We only created the publishing arm out of necessity, and give 65% royalties, do not take box rights, or take any claim on your IP. Of the first three titles that we published on-line, we have gotten box deals for two of them (even though you do not give us your box rights, we can help you get your deal).
Anyway, enough about GG. The point is, we are on the front line of change in the industry. It is my absolute belief that making a game is much more like being in a rock band than making a movie, i.e. three to five guys that are very good at what they do can make absolutley great games. You can make games that will change the industry. If you think you need to compete on the number of 3D models, or amount of non-interactive "movie" between interactive areas, or number of mo-cap moves, then you will fail. However, if you concentrate on pure game play, concept, and FUN, then you will win.
Distribution for these good games will appear. The big publishers are moving toward larger and larger games, leaving behind nice "little" niches and markets that others will move in to fill. Box distribution is not going away any time soon, and it will continue to look for good titles. Not all of the titles can be shovel ware from Russia published by highly controlling value publishers. The market will find a way. People want to play fun games, developers want to to make fun games, and it is inevitable that they find a way to meet.
You must not have read the EULA as thoroughly as you needed. Your statement is untrue. To use the Torque you pay $100 per programmer seat. On the back end, you must publish your completed game on the GarageGames site, and we split the revenue with you. Compare this to any other on-line publishing site which pays only a 35% royalty and does not provide any kind of development support or technology. You can increase your royalties up to 85% of the on-line revenue if you want to contribute code back to the community.
If your product sells well, we will represent it to box publishers. We have been in the industry for a long time and have good connections, so this is esstentially an agency deal. We guarantee to pay you 80% of all revenues received from the publisher. Compare this to standard agency deals at 15% with no technology.
We do not own your IP, or sequel rights. You can make comic books, or T-shirts, or whatever you want with your IP, characters, storyline. Use GarageGames as a launching point for your career.
Aurenjet costs $35,000 and you don't get the source code. That seems pretty much beyond the reach of indies to me. Go for CrystalSpace, it is a good, free option. However, it does not have good networking and does not have the industry proven track record of our engine.
I simply do not understand your point. We are truly working to help the indie game community. We have been working for nearly three years to get GarageGames off the ground. During that time, we have taken no pay and continue to pour investment into this company. There are definitely easier ways to make money.
I STRONGLY advise you to look over our EULA, technology, and features yourself instead of listening to an Anonymous Coward. Talk to people in our extremely active community. They believe in us. If you don't believe now, continue watching what we do and judge us by our actions.
Microsoft has gone too far. I'm done lurking here.
As a producer, director, and designer of educational software, I have been noodling a plan to help open up educational software for a couple of years. The past few months have solved a lot of problems in this area, and I am especially intrigued with the K-12 Linux work going on in Portland.
I am the co-designer of The Incredible Machine, and I want to see software like that essentially given to the schools. Now that the fine people in Portland have solved the operating system problem, and free computers with enough power are routinely given to schools, we need to spearhead an effort to get more software created for that Linux on P200 platform.
I have held off getting involved because I have a couple of start ups, but this move by Microsoft has pushed me over the edge. My start ups create games, and have some game development technology that could kick start this effort. I don't have time to help install Linux, but definitely want to get in touch with people that are interested in pushing MS out of the classroom. My email is posted on my site and in my profile (but I'm not sure/. allows you to access that).
I make games for a living. I was the founder of Dynamix a long time ago, and since then have brought games such as Red Baron, Incredible Machine, FPS: Football, Trophy Bass, and Tribes to market. Currently, I'm working on a start-up called GarageGames that helps independent game makers create and market their games.
I find most of the game posts on/. very amusing. I read/. because it helps me understand what is going on in the open source/Linux community, plus it has some great content. The only thing that bothers me is that the game posts are so far off base, that I wonder how reliable the rest of the posts are.
The Indrema posts really brings my above comment into focus. I see posts talking about how the cruel an mighty Microsoft is shoving the X-Box down developers throats, and how great Indrema will be. Well, let me tell you, the X-Box is simply the best console to ever be released and I'll believe Indrema when I see it.
This pains to to say this, because I don't want Microsoft to win any more than any of you do. But they have a lot of money, and the hardware is great.
I root for Indrema, but gamers don't buy operating systems, they buy great games. I just checked the Indrema site, and they don't have any. I have also tried to contact Indrema, with a pretty compelling story that should have gotten a response, but... nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Here at GarageGames we have had XB360s since Alpha hardware. Currently, we have about eight dev-stations in place while we are finishing up Marble Blast Ultra for distribution through the Live Arcade feature of the system. I can tell you that with everything that I know about the system, I will be the first in line at Best Buy to get my own system for home. Here's why.
I could care less about processors or GPU's, but even if I did the XB360 is great in this area. But, it is everywhere else that the system shines even brighter. The wireless controller feels JUST RIGHT, and I can finally sit on my couch and play games on my HD television (which has precious few other HD signals where I live). No other wireless controller in history, other than Wavebird for Gamecube, has felt right. This time MS nailed it.
If I'm not feeling like I want to play game, I can easily plug my iPod into the front of the system and listen to my music. Currently, I'm not much of a techie, so I listen to my music by plugging my iPod into one of those cheesy little self powered speaker systems. This might not impress the Slashdot crowd, but I don't care enough about this kind of thing to take even five minutes to figure out which input, which cable, etc. it takes to hook up to my myriad amps, etc. to make it work.
Live Arcade downloadable games are the biggest thing that will make this system a hit. Being able to sit on my couch, and choose from hundreds of games without going to the store is a HUGE WIN. Many other things such as transferrable memory cards that allow "roaming" so you can take your downloaded games to a friend's house, micropayments so you can easily buy add-ons to your game (or allowing parents to give their kids purchasing power) all add up to a system that is light years ahead of current systems.
Microsoft has done so many things right with this system that we continue to be amazed.
Greg's post was good, but I think this is currently "conventional wisdom". He simply stated what everybody has been feeling for the past couple of years. The point that this kind of thinking will change the industry is correct.
I don't want to turn this post into a big sales job, but GarageGames IS a label for indies. If you haven't heard from us yet, you soon will. I was the founder of Dynamix, a Sierra label, and got fed up with large corporate control. Myself and a few of the best technologists felt the way Greg does three years ago, but we did something about it. We leveraged our position at Sierra to get control and ownership of the code behind Tribes 2, and started selling it for $100 per programmer as the Torque Game Engine. Eighteen months since we sold our first engine, we have amassed a very large and active development community, and have started selling games via ESD.
We do anything we can to help indies: be it cheap, powerful, cross platform technology with an extremely liberal license; team building; or publishing. We only created the publishing arm out of necessity, and give 65% royalties, do not take box rights, or take any claim on your IP. Of the first three titles that we published on-line, we have gotten box deals for two of them (even though you do not give us your box rights, we can help you get your deal).
Anyway, enough about GG. The point is, we are on the front line of change in the industry. It is my absolute belief that making a game is much more like being in a rock band than making a movie, i.e. three to five guys that are very good at what they do can make absolutley great games. You can make games that will change the industry. If you think you need to compete on the number of 3D models, or amount of non-interactive "movie" between interactive areas, or number of mo-cap moves, then you will fail. However, if you concentrate on pure game play, concept, and FUN, then you will win.
Distribution for these good games will appear. The big publishers are moving toward larger and larger games, leaving behind nice "little" niches and markets that others will move in to fill. Box distribution is not going away any time soon, and it will continue to look for good titles. Not all of the titles can be shovel ware from Russia published by highly controlling value publishers. The market will find a way. People want to play fun games, developers want to to make fun games, and it is inevitable that they find a way to meet.
You must not have read the EULA as thoroughly as you needed. Your statement is untrue. To use the Torque you pay $100 per programmer seat. On the back end, you must publish your completed game on the GarageGames site, and we split the revenue with you. Compare this to any other on-line publishing site which pays only a 35% royalty and does not provide any kind of development support or technology. You can increase your royalties up to 85% of the on-line revenue if you want to contribute code back to the community.
If your product sells well, we will represent it to box publishers. We have been in the industry for a long time and have good connections, so this is esstentially an agency deal. We guarantee to pay you 80% of all revenues received from the publisher. Compare this to standard agency deals at 15% with no technology.
We do not own your IP, or sequel rights. You can make comic books, or T-shirts, or whatever you want with your IP, characters, storyline. Use GarageGames as a launching point for your career.
Aurenjet costs $35,000 and you don't get the source code. That seems pretty much beyond the reach of indies to me. Go for CrystalSpace, it is a good, free option. However, it does not have good networking and does not have the industry proven track record of our engine.
I simply do not understand your point. We are truly working to help the indie game community. We have been working for nearly three years to get GarageGames off the ground. During that time, we have taken no pay and continue to pour investment into this company. There are definitely easier ways to make money.
I STRONGLY advise you to look over our EULA, technology, and features yourself instead of listening to an Anonymous Coward. Talk to people in our extremely active community. They believe in us. If you don't believe now, continue watching what we do and judge us by our actions.
Respectfully,
Microsoft has gone too far. I'm done lurking here.
/. allows you to access that).
As a producer, director, and designer of educational software, I have been noodling a plan to help open up educational software for a couple of years. The past few months have solved a lot of problems in this area, and I am especially intrigued with the K-12 Linux work going on in Portland.
I am the co-designer of The Incredible Machine, and I want to see software like that essentially given to the schools. Now that the fine people in Portland have solved the operating system problem, and free computers with enough power are routinely given to schools, we need to spearhead an effort to get more software created for that Linux on P200 platform.
I have held off getting involved because I have a couple of start ups, but this move by Microsoft has pushed me over the edge. My start ups create games, and have some game development technology that could kick start this effort. I don't have time to help install Linux, but definitely want to get in touch with people that are interested in pushing MS out of the classroom. My email is posted on my site and in my profile (but I'm not sure
I make games for a living. I was the founder of Dynamix a long time ago, and since then have brought games such as Red Baron, Incredible Machine, FPS: Football, Trophy Bass, and Tribes to market. Currently, I'm working on a start-up called GarageGames that helps independent game makers create and market their games.
/. very amusing. I read /. because it helps me understand what is going on in the open source/Linux community, plus it has some great content. The only thing that bothers me is that the game posts are so far off base, that I wonder how reliable the rest of the posts are.
I find most of the game posts on
The Indrema posts really brings my above comment into focus. I see posts talking about how the cruel an mighty Microsoft is shoving the X-Box down developers throats, and how great Indrema will be. Well, let me tell you, the X-Box is simply the best console to ever be released and I'll believe Indrema when I see it. This pains to to say this, because I don't want Microsoft to win any more than any of you do. But they have a lot of money, and the hardware is great. I root for Indrema, but gamers don't buy operating systems, they buy great games. I just checked the Indrema site, and they don't have any. I have also tried to contact Indrema, with a pretty compelling story that should have gotten a response, but... nothing.
Jeff Tunnell
President, GarageGames
http://www.garagegames.com
Independent Games